Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello. Is that Mr. Wilburn.
Me:Steve Wilburn?
Caller: Yes.
Me: I’m afraid I don’t know anybody by that name.
My, she was confused when I knew the name of the person she wanted to get in touch with, and then claimed not to know them! I’d had a call the previous week from the same number, and
the caller then had asked for Steve before identifying him by his full name.
If I get another call, I fully intend to cut out the “checking that they’re looking for ‘Steve'” part of the conversation and just state that I don’t know a Steve Wilburn. They’ll get
the hint eventually.
And Steve? If you’re out there, mate – somebody wants you. I have no idea who they are… but then, I have no idea who you are, either. But if you could let them know the correct number
to reach you on, that’d be appreciated. Ta.
On the evening of Saturday 26th March, Earth will host it’s latest Murder Mystery Night: Murder… Way Out
West! It’ll be a rootin’, tootin’, barrel of fun, with gunslingers and prospectors and natives scheming and dealing and trying to catch a murderer: or to get away with murder!
Whether or not you’ve been to one of our murder mystery nights before, here’s a great
opportunity to come visit, catch up, dress up, and act like a fool. If you’re free, get in touch! The more, the merrier:
but let us know so that we can assign you a character!
For those of you that care about the setting and plot of these things, here’s what you need to know:
It is the spring of 1884. America’s west coast is slowly being populated with small towns full of settlers, come to prospect for precious metals, set up ranches and run dubious
saloons and now the railroad is coming! Cactus Gulch is one such small town, founded 20 years ago and tonight it has a festive air as the townsfolk get set to start their
20th anniversary celebrations.
However, all is not running smoothly. Land disputes, disreputable card games, strange folk from out of town and hostile Indians all add to a tense atmosphere. Join us in the Silver
Dollar Saloon as celebrations begin and find out how the evening unfolds…
If you’re not following Castle, yet, you should be. I can’t believe that I’ve not
recommended this more loudly by now, but seriously, this show is awesome. And I’m not just saying that because the episode I watched most-recently was the single best bit of Whedonverse fan service outside of the Whedonverse. And would be great even if it
wasn’t.
Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle as Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds. This show just got meta. Click on the image for animated version.
The ten second-summary for those of you with short attention spans: Nathan
Fillion (of Buffy/Firefly/Dr. Horrible fame) plays Richard Castle, a crime fiction writer who’s drafted into helping the NYPD on a murder case. He then
continues to hang around (thanks to his connections with the mayor and the chief of police) with detective Kate Beckett – played by Stana Katic (she was in Quantum of Solace, but we remember her most-fondly from the third Librarian film) – in an
effort to use her as the inspiration of his next fictional crime fighter, Nicky Heat. Its cleverly-spun mysteries will appeal to mystery lovers and its comedic elements – generally
quite dry but sometimes verging on the silly – prevent the show from being “just another crime drama.”
CTRL-ALT-DEL comic from 28th Feb 2011
The third season’s broadcasting right now (and you can also watch it on Hulu, assuming that you’re in the USA or you know how to Google
for how to “watch Hulu without a proxy or VPN”), and the first two seasons are available on DVD. You’ve got my recommendation; now go try it.
Microsoft recently tweeted: “It’s not
often that we encourage you to stop using one of our products, but for IE6, we’ll make an exception”. This coincides with the launch of The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, a website that tries to encourage people to drop this hideously old and awful browser in favour of better, modern,
standards-compliant ones, thereby saving web developers heaps of work.
Internet Explorer 6 usage stats, from IE6 Countdown. I'm honestly shocked that the number is still as high as 12%. Where are they getting that from?
That’s not strictly true; they’re encouraging people to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 and 9, presumably, which are still a little lacking in support for some modern web standards. But
they’re a huge step forward, and everybody who’d like to stick with Internet Explorer should be encouraged to upgrade. There’s no excuse for still using IE6.
They’re even providing a tool to let you put a “Upgrade now, damnit!” banner on your website,
visible only to IE6 users. It’s similar to the IE6Update tool, really, but has the benefit of actually
being supported by the browser manufacturer. That has to count for something.
Will it make a difference? I don’t know. I’m frankly appalled that there are modern, high-tech countries that still have significant numbers of IE6 users: Japan counts over
10%, for example! We’re talking here about a ten year old web browser: a web browser that’s older than MySpace, older than Facebook, older than GMail, older than YouTube.
Internet Explorer 6 was released into a world where Lord of the Rings that would take you a long time to read, rather than taking you a long time to watch. A world where in-car
CD players still weren’t universal, and MP3 players were a rarity. Do you remember MiniDisc players? Internet Explorer 6 does. The World Trade Center? Those towers were still standing
when Internet Explorer was released to the world. And if that’s making you think that 10 years is a long time, remember that in the fast-changing world of technology, it’s always even
longer.
Just remember what Microsoft (now, at long last) says: Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6.
This will be the first time I’ve ever written an On This Day post where I haven’t been able to link
back to a blog post that I actually wrote in the year in question. That’s because, in 2002, I was “between blogs”: the only thing I wrote about online that I still have a copy of was
the imminent re-launch of AvAngel.com, my vanity
site at the time. In that post, however, I did mention that I’d re-written my CV, which was relevant to what was going on in my life in March 2002…
Looking Back
On this day in 2002, I first began working for SmartData, my primary employer for the last nine years. A few months
earlier, Reb – my girlfriend whom I’d moved in with in 2001 – and I had broken up, and I’d recently found the opportunity to visit Aberystwyth and visit friends there (the trip during
which I first met Claire, although we didn’t get together until a little later). On that same trip to Aber, I also met
Simon, who at that point had recently accepted a voluntary redundancy from the Rural Studies department of the University and was getting started with the launch of his software
company, SmartData. He’d recently landed a contract with the National Dairy Farm Assured Scheme and needed an extra pair of hands on board to help out with it.
Sorting out premises was coming along somewhat slower than he’d planned, though. As part of the SpinOut Wales scheme, SmartData had been offered cheap accommodation in a
University-owned building, but they were dragging their feet with the paperwork. On our first day working together, Simon and I crammed into his tiny home office, shoulder-to-shoulder,
to hack code together. The arrangement didn’t last long before we got sick of it, and we “moved in” to the room (that would eventually be legitimately ours) at Peithyll, a former
farmhouse in the village of Capel Dewi, near Aberystwyth.
The entrance to Peithyll, where SmartData established itself for much of the first six years of its life. It was quite a cycle to get out there every day, but in the summer it made
for a great office: not many people can sit at their desk and watch red kites hunting outside, or go for a lunchtime walk up a hill with a picnic.
Over the last nine years since, as the company has grown, I’ve always felt like a core part of it, shaping it’s direction. As we transitioned from developing primarily desktop
applications to primarily web-based applications, and as we switched from mostly proprietary technologies to mostly open-source technologies, I was pointing the way. By working with a
wide variety of different clients, I’ve learned a great deal about a number of different sectors that I’d never dreamed I’d come into contact with: farm assurance schemes, legal
processes, genetic testing, human resource allocation, cinema and theatre, and more. It’s been a wonderfully broad and interesting experience.
Looking Forward
When I began making plans to move to Oxford, I initially anticipated that I’d need to find work over here. But Simon
stressed that my presence was important to SmartData, and offered to allow me to work remotely, from home, which is most of what I’ve been doing for the last year or so. Thanks to the
miracles of modern technology, this has worked reasonably well: VoIP phones keep
us in touch, tunneling and virtual networks allow us to work as if we were all in the same location, and webcams help us feel like we’re not quite so far from one another.
But this wasn’t to be a permanent solution: just a way to allow me to keep contributing to SmartData for as long as possible. Last week, I was offered and accepted a new job with a new
employer, here in Oxford. Starting in April, I’ll be managing the administration and the ongoing development of the website of the Bodleian Libraries, the deposit library associated with Oxford University.
My new office, right in the heart of Oxford. It looks a lot less green, and a lot more prestigious, than Peithyll.
It’s a huge change, going from working as part of a tiny team in a West Wales town to working with hundreds of people at one of the largest employers in Oxford. I’ve no doubt that it’ll
take some getting used to: for a start, I’m going to have to get into the habit of getting dressed before I go to work – something I could get away with while working from home and that
might even have been tolerated in the office at SmartData, as long as I threw on a towel or something (in fact, I have on more than one occasion taken a shower in the SmartData offices,
then sat at my desk, wrapped in towels, until I’d dried off a little).
This feels like a huge turning point in my life: a whole new chapter – or, perhaps the completion of the “turning a page” that moving to Oxford began. My new job is a brand new
position, which provides an exciting opportunity to carve a Dan-shaped hole, and I’ll be working with some moderately-exciting technologies on some very exciting projects. I’m sure I’ll
have more to say once I’m settled in, but for now I’ll just say “Squeee!” and be done with it.
Oh: and for those of you who follow such things, you’ll note that Matt P has just announced his new job, too. Although he’s a sloppy blogger: he’s actually been working there for a little while
already.
This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone
by.
I’ve just worked out what Jedward‘s debut single reminds me of. But first, because I expect –
hope? – that the folks who read this blog are oblivious to Irish teen popstars Jedward, I’ll fill you in. Identical twins John and Edward, Jedward lost at The X Factor in 2009 and then
went on the following year to release a single which reached #2 in the UK charts and #1 in the Irish. That single was Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby), a simultaneous cover/mashup of Queen/Bowie’s fantastic Under Pressure, and
the monstrosity that was Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby.
It’s an obvious combination because it’s easy: perhaps the laziest music mashup I’ve ever heard. Ice Ice Baby already (very noticeably) sampled Under Pressure, although Van Winkle
denied this to begin with, so Jedward barely had to “shuffle the two together”. I’m not claiming that it’s not catchy, just that it’s not original.
Oh, and you’re likely to see more of them: they’re poised to be Ireland’s entry into the Eurovision Song Contest, this year.
Part Two – and the Aurochs
Aurochs(Bos primigenius) were a huge species of bovine – the predecessors of modern
domestic cattle – that roamed freely around much of Europe and Asia right up into the 17th century (although their numbers had diminished greatly since about the
12th-13th, primarily as a result of hunting, and the destruction of their habitat by climate changes and human expansion).
Painting of an aurochs. From ground to shoulder, these animals stood about two metres high, and weighed about a tonne. That's about the size and mass of a small rhinoceros, or -
perhaps more-aptly - eight to nine thousand quarter-pounders.
Why am I talking about these beasts, you ask. Well, apart from the fact that Jedward and the Aurochs would be an amazingly-cool band name, I’ve been reminded by the song above
of the Heck cattle. Allow me to explain:
Heck cattle are a breed of cattle which have been bred over the last 70 years or so as part of an effort to “breed back” the Aurochs by combining the relevant genetics of those species that succeeded them. The idea is that all of the
characteristics of the species can still exist in some form or another in modern domestic cattle, and with sufficient selective breeding it’s possible to get back whatever you want.
It’s controversial, especially when it’s used to “bring back” extinct species: after all, no member of the “new” aurochs will ever be genetically identical to any “old”
previously-living one. But then, no aurochs and it’s children will ever have shared the exact same genetic code, either. There’s a philosophical question, there: suppose we managed to
breed back an animal whose genes shared a specified level of similarity with a previously-existing species (say, 99.8% – about the level of DNA shared between all humans): could one
legitimately call it a member of that now-extinct species, recreated?
A male Heck cattle. Sure LOOKS like an aurochs, doesn't it?
Heck cattle aren’t even close, so this is just a thought experiment. They’re neither large enough nor distinct enough from domestic cattle to be called aurochs: they’re just a
primitive-looking breed of cattle. But there’s a point to this whole thing; hang in there.
Part Three – breeding back music
I wonder if it’s possible to “breed back” music by remixing and mashing-up, in a similar way to that seen by the breeders of the Heck cattle and other similar schemes. The family trees
are much smaller, but many of the same principles apply: Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) samples both Under Pressure and Ice Ice Baby. Ice Ice Baby, in turn, also samples Under Pressure.
There’s presumably original elements in the final song, too, which represents the introduction of new (genetic) material: let’s call that mutation. Add a few hundred more remixes and
mashups, samples and loops, and make a dozen more songs from these: would it be possible to “get back” the original Queen song by using samples of all of the surviving parts?
That depends, really. Do sufficient samples exist? There’s a lot of loss of information if everybody only uses the iconic dum-dum-dum-de-de-dumdum melody. Do we accurately know
what we’re trying to recreate? A big problem with the Heck cattle is that we know a lot about how they looked and only a little about their temperament, their behaviour, or – and let’s
face it, this is what people are actually asking – their taste. Is somebody’s memory of a song sufficient that they could be asked to identify a “recreated” piece of music, in the same
way as we try to use rare contemporary pictures of aurochs in an effort to reproduce them?
This is a rarely-seen Heck Mercury. It's a pale comparison to the real deal: it looks the same, but it doesn't sing even remotely as well. Sadly, efforts to find descendents of the
rock star himself have been hampered by his sexuality, a problem not encountered with the aurochs... although it would provide another, perhaps more-amusing, explanation for their
extinction.
Or maybe Jedward’s song reminded me of the Heck cattle simply because hearing it made me say, “Heck, no! What’s this bull?”
I rediscovered quite how readable the language is when I genuinely ended up writing the following method last week:
# On saving, updates the #Shift counters if the #ExperienceLevel of this
# #Volunteer has been changed
def update_counters_if_experience_level_changed
update_counters if experience_level_changed?
end
For the benefit of those of you who aren’t programmers, I’ll point out that which is obvious to those of us who are: the body of the method (that’s the line that’s indented) is almost
identical to the method name (the line that starts with “def”).
This is the equivalent of going to WikiHow and looking up the article on, say, How to Make a Tie Dyed Cake, only to discover that the text of the article simply
says, “Choose what colours you want, and then make a cake in those colours”… and you understand perfectly and go and make the cake, because you’ve got that
good an understanding. In this metaphor, you’re the Ruby interpreter, by the way. And the cake is delicious.
Okay, I cheated a little: the
experience_level_changed? method was provided for me by the Rails framework. And I had to write the
update_counters method myself (although it, too, contains only one line of code in its body). But the point is still the same: writing Ruby, and thinking in a Rubyish way,
produces beautifully readable, logical code.
This week, I discovered Breakup Notifier, a whole new way to be creepy on Facebook. I mention it
because I just know that there are some of you out there who were waiting for this tool to be invented (and we’ll know who you are because you’ll be the ones to try to keep a
low profile by not commenting to say “ugh; that’s creepy”).
Breakup Notifier: "You like someone. They're in a relationship. Be the first to know when they're out of it."
The idea is, as it says on the site, that you can tell Breakup Notifier which of your friends you’d be interested in, if only it weren’t for the fact that they’re in a (presumably
closed) relationship. If their relationship status changes, you get an email to let you know, so you can be the first to take advantage of the new situation. Like Ted
in The
Window, an episode of How I Met Your Mother: which if you’ve not seen yet, you should try.
I think that the developers of this site are missing an opportunity, though, to make a little cash on the side. All you have to do is to be able to buy “priority access” on the people
you’re interested in. If you’ve paid, then you get notice of a breakup in advance of other people who are interested in the same person but who haven’t paid. The amount of
advance notice is based on the difference in your bids: so if I’m stalking watching Alice, and so are Bob and Charlie, but I paid £10
and Bob paid £2, then maybe I’ll get a notification 8 hours before Bob, who get a notification 2 hours before Charlie. It’s all relative, so if I’m also interested in Eddie, who’s also
being followed by Frankie and Graeme, but we’re all on the free package, then we all get notified together.
As far as marketing’s concerned, that’s easy: just tell users how many others are watching the people they’re interested in! I suspect that more money would be made if
you don’t tell them how much the others have paid, but the whole thing’s as sociologically-complicated as it is skin-crawling. What happened to the good old days, when
you’d just keep pressing refresh on your crush’s MySpace page until they hinted that things might be rocky with their significant other?
Hang around on any polyamory-themed newsgroups, forums, or mailing lists, and – before long –
you’ll see a reasonable number of topics like this:
My girlfriend just “came out” to me as polyamorous.
I don’t feel comfortable being tied down to one person. Am I poly?
My husband is seeing somebody who identifies as mono.
What do all of these topics have in common? In each case, they involve at least one person who defines themselves, or others, as being “polyamorous” or “monoamorous/monogamous”.
That’s a perfectly popular mindset – there are plenty of folks who claim that
we’re
all hard-wired for mono- or poly-, just like we are for our sexual orientation – but it’s not one that I can get my head around. For me, polyamory is not an identity.
It’s not something I am, but something I do. The difference is important: I am not polyamorous (although I’m in a relationship that is), just as I was not
monoamorous (when I was last in a relationship that was).
I’m not alone in this belief, although I’m perhaps
in a minority. It’s evidently the case for many practitioners of polyamorous relationships that they are “poly”, just like they might be gay, straight, or bisexual (among other
sexualities).
It’s Complicated. For you, perhaps.
We attach a great deal of significance to
our personal identity: I suppose that’s one explanation for why people get so attached to the idea that they are something. It’s very easy to claim an identity based on
your race, your sexual orientation, your religion, or your political affiliation. It’s clear from these examples that an identity does not have to be something genetic or biological,
but can be the result of a choice. However, this still doesn’t “fix” things for me: it still doesn’t feel as though my relationship choices are part of me so much as they are part of my
circumstances.
The difference, for me, is one of activity. One can have a sexual orientation without having sexual activity, can have a religious belief without engaging in a religious
ceremony; can have a political stance without voting (although I know people who’d throw back at me a No true Scotsman argument about those last two). But I can’t fathom a way that one can “be” polyamorous without having a
relationship!
I wonder if, perhaps, those people who identify as “being”
polyamorous would claim that they could not possibly be happy if they were somehow confined to exactly one or fewer romantic relationships? That’s the only way that I can
conceive that one could justify a polyamorous self-definition. Anything less would seem to be putting the cart before the horse: if it’s not essential to you, then how is it part of
you?
And maybe there are some people would answer that question affirmatively; people for whom having a second (or third, or more) romantic relationship is critical to their happiness. In
fact, I’m sure there are. Maybe these are the truly “polyamorous” people – the nonmonogamy equivalent of what in sexuality would be a Kinsey 6 (or 0: I haven’t yet decided which way this scale should go).
I can conceive of the existence of these people: I’ve probably even met some. They’re not so dissimilar to those “monogamous” people who are incapable of being happy when they’re
single. I’ll admit that the society we live in is horribly biased towards couples, and that we’re culturally stunted in that we’re trained to think of those who are single as somehow
“failing”, but I just can’t quite get my head around it. I’ve been perfectly happy at various points of being in intimate relationships with zero, one, or more partners, and I almost
never go “out of my way” to seek out a potential mate.
Perhaps I’m the outlier: it certainly sounds like it, in the face of overwhelming evidence. But for me, that’s certainly the most comfortable choice to find happiness regardless of how
my relationships happen to be laid out. And for that reason, polyamorous relationships are, when the occur, simply a rational choice for me – not some drive to “hoard” more lovers nor
(as is commonly stated by some poly practitioners) a way to have your needs by more than a single person. To me, engaging in an open, polyamorous relationship – where possible – just
makes logical sense, and for those capable of it, there seems no reason not to use that kind of relationship as a starting point. Everything else can be bolted on top.
This weekend, Ruth & I went to London for a short course in massage. After hitting up a couple of geocaches in
the beautiful Holland Park, we trotted into Notting Hill and met up with the woman
who was to show us a variety of different ways to massage a variety of different body parts. “This is going to hurt,” the instructor warned us, as we sat ourselves down alongside the
other two students – a Spanish couple about ten years older than us – and introduced ourselves. “We’re going to be experimenting with the extremes of hard and soft pressure to
understand when each are useful and to find the middle ground. If you don’t wince at least once during that process, then your partner is doing it wrong.” She wasn’t kidding. At one
point, I remember musing over whether the instructor might run an S&M dungeon on her days off. I think it was right after she said, “Come on; I want to see red marks!”
A variation on the 'S' move, common to hand and foot massage. As opposed to the 'M' move. Hang on... these moves are called 'S' and 'M'...? Seriously?
Feet, hands, shoulders, heads, backs… we took a tour of the body, swapping over from time to time to alternate who was the masseur and who was the… masseuee? Apparently I was the star
pupil and picked it up quickly, but I may have had an unfair advantage because I’ve got “just the right kind of thumbs” for massage – they’re fat and straight, which is apparently
ideal. So if the world of software goes belly-up when we someday invent computers that can program themselves, at least I now know that I could retrain as a massage therapist.
It’s a profession for which I’ve discovered a new-found respect. Massage is hard. Surprisingly harder than it looks. Despite her slender arms and shoulders, our trainer had a
hell of a grip and a lot of upper body strength: emulating the level of pressure that she was able to apply was incredibly challenging, and by the second time that we were switching
positions, I’d begun to work up a bit of a sweat. In my case, at least these bouts of exercise were punctuated by getting a nice relaxing massage (or, at worst, being used as an
experimental punching bag), but for a professional masseur there’s no such relief.
All in all, it was a fun afternoon/evening out. We learned some enjoyable skills and got the chance to practice them under expert guidance. Once I’d learned to think of the rhythm and
looseness as being similar to drumming (“What is that? 3/4 time?”), I really got a knack for loosening up back and shoulder muscles with hand-tapping. And Ruth learned to do an
awesome hand massage trick using her knuckles.
Many of you will remember that we went to Go Ape as part
of Ruth & JTA’s stag/hen night, last year… and that we dressed as superheroes.
Superheroes gathered with civilians outside Jordans YHA, at Ruth and JTA's Stag/Hen Weekend party.
Well: it looks like we made a big difference to one little girl. Do you remember the kid who was scared to go on the big “tarzan swing” until she was cheered on my a group of us,
hanging from the next platform along? Well, it turns out that we were mentioned in that girl’s family’s review of the day.
A review of the day out, by Emily Sarwa. Click on it to see it embiggened.
That’s kind-of sweet.
In other news, we’ll be doing another Go Ape trip on 27th
March, to celebrate Paul‘s birthday. More of you ex-Aberites read my blog than has, so – if you’re coming – Paul’s asked
me to remind you to fill in the form on his
blog post about the event (we need to do this so we can pre-book for the appropriate number of people), and we’ll see you there! (superhero costumes are not mandatory, but you
know I’ll be wearing mine…)
Early this week, I’ve spent quite a bit of time knee deep in the guts of Phusion Passenger
(which remains one of the best deployment strategies for Rack applications, in my mind), trying to work out why a particular application I’d been working on wouldn’t deploy properly
after a few upgrades and optimisations on the development server. Ultimately, I found the problem, but for a few hours there there I thought I was losing my mind.
This lunchtime, I decided to pull out all of my instant messenger logs (being out of the office, my co-workers at SmartData and I do a lot of talking via an IM system). I’d had a hunch that, so far this week, “balls” would be amongst my most-frequently typed
words, chiefly uttered as yet another hypothesis about why the development server wasn’t behaving itself was blown out of the water. A few regular expressions (to strip it down to just
the words I typed) and a run through a word-counter, and I had some results!
Here’s my top words of the work week so far:
Position
Word(s)
1 – 18
the, to, I, a, it, that, of, in, and, on, but, have, what, is, you, just, so, for
Positions 1 through 18 contain some of the most-common conjunctions and pronouns that I use on a day-to-day basis, as well as some common verbs. Nothing surprising there.
So far, so good.
19
Rails
Between the projects I’ve been involved with and those my colleagues are working on, there’s been a lot of discussion about (Ruby on)
Rails around the office so far this week.
20
IPN, do
One of the projects I’ve been working on this week has used a payment gateway with an Instant Payment Notification service, so it’s not surprising that “IPN” appeared in
the top 20, too…
22
was, this
24
my, know, at
27
up, don’t
Over 50% of “don’t”s were immediately followed by “know”: Monday was one of those days.
29
I’m
30
yeah, be, [name of troublesome web app]
Not unexpectedly, the name of the project that caused so much confusion earlier this week came up more than a little.
33
there, one, if
36
we, see, problem, get balls, back, all
These seven words never all appeared in a sentence together, but I sort of wish that they had. There’s the key word – balls – apparently the joint 36th most-used word by me
between Monday morning and Wednesday lunchtime.
Other common words this week so-far included “jQuery“, that great JavaScript library (there was some discussion about how we can best make use of the
new features provided by version 1.5), “payment” (again; a lot of talk of payment processing, this week), “means” (mostly where I was explaining the results of my investigations into
the troublesome server), “tried” (a disappointing-sounding word), “error” (I saw a few of those, to be sure!), and “somehow” (not a reassuring thing to catch yourself saying).
Also pretty common this week was “boiler”, as I explained to my workmates the saga of the boiler at my house, which broke down at the weekend, leaving us with no hot water nor heating
until it was repaired on Tuesday. On the upside, I did get to poke around inside the boiler while the repairman was taking it to bits, and learned all kinds of fascinating things about
the way that they work. So, a silver lining, there.
Bits of our boiler: the hip bone's connected to the... leg bone.
With the boiler fixed at home, and the development server fixed at work, it finally feels like this week’s turning into the right kind of week. But for a while there, it didn’t
look certain!
Have you come across GeoMidpoint? This web service will help you find the midpoint between any number of geographical
points. They’ve got all kinds of proposed uses for it, like finding a convenient restaurant
that’s equidistant from each of you and your friends, but one of the more frivolous activities you can enjoy using it for is to find your home “centre of gravity”. Put in everywhere
you’ve lived (and, optionally, how long you lived there for, as a weighting factor), and it’ll show you the centre point.
I gave it a go. Here’s where I’m centred.
Dan's centre point (the green 'M' pin).
Okay, you think – it’s not so surprising that the centre point is near Preston: I spent over a decade living there. But here’s the quirk: my addresses weren’t weighted by how long I’d
lived there. All I did is put in everywhere I’d lived for six months or more, and let these places all have equal weight.
Curious, then, that the centre point comes to within a quarter hour’s drive of either of my parents’ houses, in Preston.
I suppose there are some balancing factors, here: places that cancel one another out quite nicely. The Northern bias of Scotland is counteracted by the comparative Southernness of
Aberystwyth, Oxford, and Surrey. The strong Western bias of the many different places I lived in Aberystwyth are invalidated by quite how far East Aberdeen and London are. But still, it
seems to be a quirky coincidence to me that the centre point would be so close to where I did most of my growing up, despite how much I’ve moved around.
New Earth, where we'll be moving later this year
This observation comes only a little while after the other Earthlings and I have
finished signing the paperwork on what is later this year to become our new home, New Earth. It’s still in the Oxford area, but provides us with some nice things that we’re looking
forward to, like more space (something we never seem to have enough of!). And any of you who’ve visited by car will probably appreciate how much more accessible the driveway is…
We’ll be moving this Summer, and in doing so we’ll pull my little green triangle over into Chorley. Better that, I think, than out in the Irish sea, which is where it’d be if I weighted
where I’d lived by the amount of time I’d spent there!
Recently, I learned that the roads in Great Britain are numbered in accordance with a scheme first imagined about ninety years ago, and, as it evolved, these road numbers were grouped into radial zones around London (except for Scotland, whose road
numbering only joined the scheme later). I’d often noticed the “clusters” of similarly-numbered roads (living in Aberystwyth, you soon notice that all the A and B roads start with a 4,
and I soon noticed that the very same A44 that starts in Aberystwyth seems to have followed me to my home here
in Oxford).
Road Numbering Zones of the United Kingdom
Who’d have thought that there was such a plan to it. If you’re aware of any of the many roads which are in the “wrong” zone, you’d be forgiven for not seeing the pattern earlier, though. However, seeing all of this
attempt at adding order to what was a chaotic system for the long period between the Romans leaving and the mid-20th century makes me wonder one thing: are there
“roadspotters”?
There exist trainspotters, who pursue the more-than-a-little-bit-nerdy hobby of traveling around and looking at different locomotives, marking down their numbers in notepads and
crossing them off in reference books. Does the same phenomena exist within road networks?
It turns out that it does; or some close approximation of it does, anyway. One gentleman, for example, writes about “recovering” road signs formerly of the A6144(M), which – until 2006 – was the UK’s only single-carriageway motorway. A site
calling itself The Motorway Archive has a thoroughly-researched article on the construction history of the M74/A74(M) from Glasgow to Carlisle. Another website – and one that I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d
visited on a number of previous occasions – reviews every motorway service area in
Britain. And, perhaps geekiest of all, the Society for All British and Irish Road
Enthusiasts (SABRE) maintains a club, meetups, and a thoroughly-researched wiki of everything you never wanted to know about the roads of the British Isles.
From what started as a quick question about British road numbering, I find myself learning about a hobby that’s perhaps even geekier than trainspotting. Thanks, Internet.
I talk a lot. If you don’t want to listen to me ramble, and you’re just looking for the free deed poll generator, click here.
After Claire and I changed our names back in 2007, I actually took the time to do a little research into deeds poll (or, more-specifically in this case, deeds of change of name). It turns out that we did it the wrong way. We paid a company to do all of the paperwork for
us, and – while it wasn’t terribly expensive – but it wasn’t free, and “free” is exactly how much it ought to cost.
In the intervening years I’ve helped several friends to change their names via deeds poll (yes, “deeds poll” is the correct plural), and I’ve learned more and more about why the whole
process should be simpler and cheaper than many people would have you believe.
A deed poll, by definition, is nothing more than a promise signed by one person (it’s not even a contract – it’s got little more weight than a New Year’s resolution), on paper which
has straight edges. That’s what the word “poll” actually means: that the paper has straight edges. Why? Because back then, a contract would typically be cut into two on an irregular line, so that when the
two halves came together it would be clear that they were originally part of the same document – an anti-forgery measure. A deed poll, because it’s signed only by one person, doesn’t
need to be separated like this, and so it has straight edges.
The Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, a contract from 1252 - note the cut top edge where it originally joined to the "other half" of the contract.
That means that’s it’s perfectly legitimate for you to write, on the back of a napkin, “I have given up my name [former name] and have adopted for all purposes the name [new name].
Signed as a deed on [date] as [former name] and [new name]. Witnessed by [witnesses signature(s)].”
The problem comes when you send that napkin off to the Inland Revenue, or the DVLA, or the Passport Office, and they send it back and laugh. You see, it helps a hell of a lot if your
deed poll looks sort-of official. You ought to put some work into making it look nice, because that makes a world of difference when you ask people to believe it. That’s
not to say that they won’t laugh at you anyway – the Passport Office certainly laughed at me – but at least they’ll accept your name change if it has an air of authority
and is covered with all of the most-relevant legalese.
Behind the dozens of scam artists who’ll charge you £10, £20, £30, or even more to produce you an “official” deed poll (tip: there’s no such thing), there are one or two “free”
services, too. But even the best of these has problems: the site is riddled with advertisements, the document isn’t produced instantly, you’re limited in how many deed polls you can
generate, and – perhaps worst of all – you have to give them your email address in order to get the password to open the documents they give you. What gives?
Generate free UK deeds of name change at freedeedpoll.org.uk.
So I’ve made my own. It’s completely free to use and it’s available at freedeedpoll.org.uk: so what are you waiting for – go and change your name! Oh, and it’s also open-source, so if you want to see how it works (or even make your own version), you
can.
Why? Well: I don’t like feeling like I’ve been scammed out of money, so if I can help just one person change their name for free who might otherwise have been conned into paying for
something that they didn’t need: well, then I’ve won. So change your name or help your friends and family to, on me, or just download my code and learn a little bit about Ruby, Sinatra,
and Prawn (the technologies that power the site). What’re you waiting for?
